A/HRC/58/60 cultural heritage for communities be lost but, even worse, digitalization will risk severely and negatively affecting the cultural rights of individuals and groups, including through discrimination, marginalization and dispossession. 19. Diverse digital technologies are applied to cultural heritage. They include digitizing processes that convert physical cultural heritage into digital formats (such as photographs, audiovisual recordings, scans or three-dimensional models, including laser scanning, light detection and ranging (LiDAR), photogrammetry and reflectance transformation imaging), as well as more complex digitalization processes that change how cultural heritage is managed and shared, such as through virtual and augmented reality, interactive platforms and digital storytelling. For example, machine learning can help to create comprehensive maps of the past, facilitating pattern recognition and iconographic searches and identifying missing fragments across global collections. 20. The importance and value of cultural rights should always be recalled, despite such diversity, in a fast-moving and innovative sector. IV. Main challenges of digitalization of cultural heritage 21. Digitalization poses numerous, multifaceted challenges to respect for cultural rights. As with all issues surrounding cultural heritage, these challenges can be articulated by a number of questions, namely how to resolve conflicts and competing interests over cultural heritage while ensuring the participation of communities most related to such heritage, and when and how to arbitrate these conflicts. 22. The first mandate holder, Farida Shaheed, asserted that varying degrees of access and enjoyment may be recognized, taking into consideration the diverse interests of individuals and groups according to their relationship with specific cultural heritages. Distinctions should be made between: (a) originators or “source communities”, namely communities that consider themselves as the custodians or owners of a specific cultural heritage, people who are keeping cultural heritage alive and/or have taken responsibility for it; (b) individuals and communities, including local communities, who consider the cultural heritage in question to be an integral part of the life of the community but may not be actively involved in its maintenance; (c) scientists and artists; and (d) the general public, accessing the cultural heritage of others. Interestingly, the Council of Europe Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society, in its article 2 (b), refers to the notion of “heritage community”, which “consists of people who value specific aspects of cultural heritage which they wish, within the framework of public action, to sustain and transmit to future generations”. This implies that concerned communities may reunite people from diverse cultural, religious, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds over a specific cultural heritage that they consider they have in common.59 23. From a cultural rights viewpoint, having in mind international human rights standards relating to Indigenous Peoples and minorities, the Special Rapporteur considers that, as a matter of principle, source communities, as well as those who have close connections to a specific cultural heritage, should be prioritized in decision-making.60 A. Recognizing and ensuring the right to cultural heritage in the digital era 24. International human rights law does not expressly recognize a right to cultural heritage, but numerous provisions provide scope for such an interpretation, based on the understanding that “cultural heritage is important not only in itself, but also in relation to its human dimension, in particular its significance for individuals and communities and their identity and development processes”.61 As was stressed by previous mandate holders, the 59 60 61 8 A/HRC/17/38, para. 62. Ibid., para. 76. Ibid., para. 77. GE.25-01705